Don't Ask

by Donald E. Westlake

  Three fifty-seven (beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep). "Maybe,"

  Dortmunder said, "we should take some other way."

  "You're sounding," Murch's Mom informed him in a not friendly fashion,

  "like my boy Stanley."

  Still three fifty-seven. The four purse-toting guys completed their boarding process into the wallowing seaplane, and the pilot raised an eyebrow at Kelp. "You coming or not?"

  "Not," Kelp replied, and looked downstream.

  The pilot didn't get it: "Listen, pal, I'm leaving."

  "Good-bye," Kelp said.

  The pilot shook his head, exasperated. 'This is the seaplane dock, you know. If you don't want a seaplane, what are you doing here?"

  "Waiting for the cross town," Kelp said. Then, seeing that the pilot was still not satisfied, and so to forestall more verbiage, Kelp added,

  "Your people are gonna throw up in there, pretty soon."

  Which was true. A seaplane idling at a dock is a restless thing indeed, and a couple of the passengers inside this one had already turned all over the color of their eye shadow. The pilot, seeing this, expelled an expletive, jumped aboard his trusty steed, and hi hoedout of there.

  Three fifty-eight. Hradec consulted his watch, which read 3:56. "He'll be here soon," he told Lusk and Terment, who looked passive.

  Three fifty-eight again. "Enough!" cried Murch's Mom, as she yanked the wheel hard left, gunned through the intersection, and caused a seven-car collision behind her, of which hers was none of the seven cars.

  "About time," Dortmunder muttered, with one eye on his watch and the other on the meter.

  Three fifty-nine. Tiny marched across First Avenue; traffic waited for him.

  Four o'clock, on the button. As the seaplane trundled away from the raft upon which Kelp remained the only survivor, a small, sleek outboard motorboat of the sort James Bond used to leap into from passing seaplanes came slicing northward along the shore. Stan Murch stood at the wheel, in wet yellow slicker and hat, and with brisk, tricky adjustments of speed and rudder he brought his little boat to a perfect stop at Kelp's feet. "So what I did," he began, leaning over to press his palm on the rough planks of the raft to hold the boat steady while Kelp boarded, "I came around the Brooklyn side of Governor's Island, because that way you don't have the Statue of Liberty ferry to contend with, but then I came over to the Manhattan side before the turn for the Williamsburg Bridge, because you've got less commercial stuff over here."

  "Good," Kelp said. "I thought that plane would never get the hell away from here."

  "We've got time," Murch said, not bothering to look at his watch.

  Four oh-one. "I don't like to say anything--" Dortmunder began.

  "Then don't," Murch's Mom advised him as she careened east bound through the intersection at Twenty-sixth Street and Second Avenue not very long after the light had turned red against her, horn screaming defrance at those on Second Avenue who had it in mind to continue their own journeys downtown.

  Four oh-two. Tiny strode through drifts of litter into the shade beneath the FDR Drive; no muggers followed. Ahead stretched the chain-link fence, the rotted old ferry building beyond it. To left and right, beneath the elevated highway, sagged the carapaces of former cars. But where, Tiny wondered, where were Dortmunder and Murch's Mom and the taxicab?

  Coming, coming. (Still 4:02.) Screaming left turn onto First Avenue, another shaving of a red light at Twenty-seventh Street, cab wheels smoking. Murch's Mom clung grimly to the wheel, sharp chin just above it, jutting out at the windshield. In back, Dortmunder clung to the ashtray, it being the only thing he could find to hold on to.

  Four oh-two. (Yes; still 4:02.) Kelp took the white lab coat out of the D'Ag Bag as Murch steered the little motorboat slowly north along the tumbled shore. Shaking out the lab coat, borrowed earlier today from a clinic farther downtown, Kelp said, "We don't want to be late."

  "You don't want to be all over wet, either," Murch pointed out, "which is why I'm easing along here. Don't worry, we're doing fine."

  Still 4:02. "It's four o'clock," Hradec said, looking at his watch.

  "I'll go down and meet him."

  Four oh-three, at last. Tiny emerged from under the FDR Drive, the fence closer now. The parked cars, a couple of them with diplomat plates, were just ahead and to his right. The guarded gate was beyond the cars over there, the sentries not yet aware of Titty's existence. But they would be.

  And here came the cab, a yellow comet streaking beneath the FDR Drive, slashing by Tin^s left elbow like a surface-to-surface missile, and slamming to a stop just short of the fence. The two guards looked over in mild amaze as the dust of decades gently rose and slowly settled on the cab and its surround. "Why don't we just crash on through?"

  Dortmunder suggested from the floor.

  "That's three bucks eighty," Murch's Mom said, belting the meter with a solid right hand.

  "About time," Tiny muttered to himself, and slowed his pace as he approached the cab from the rear.

  "Not here yet," Kelp said, peeking around the wall just south of the ferry slip, as Murch held the little boat steady on the unsteady water.

  "Told you we had time," Murch said.

  Dortmunder, grousing, paid the meter and a fifty-cent tip.

  "Big spender," Murch's Mom commented. Dortmunder, maintaining his dignity, got out of the cab and approached the gate, while behind him Murch's Mom switched on her off duty sign; part of the plan.

  "Diddums," said Dortmunder. When the guards looked at him funny, he said, "The ambassador's expecting me."

  One of the guards spent a long time consulting the top sheet of paper on his clipboard, a sheet of paper that contained only one entry:

  "Diddums--4:00 p.m." "Right," he allowed at last, and pulled open the unlocked gate.

  Tiny pulled open the cab's left rear door. "Take me," he bellowed, loudly enough to be heard by the guards over at the gate, "up to a Hunnerd and forty-seventh Street."

  Murch's Mom came boiling out from her cab as Tiny started to squeeze himself in. "Get outta there!" she screamed, plenty loudly enough to be heard by the guards, the sea gulls, and the traffic up above on the FDR Drive. "Don'tcha see the off-duty light?"

  Dortmunder, pretending not to hear all that yelling in his background, walked on through the ferry building's open middle. Ahead lay the old thick planks of the ferry slip, with the ship alongside and, at the far end, Kelp's head peering into view in the lower right, like the artist's self-portrait in a heroic mural. And coming out of the Pride of Votskojek, as the self-portrait modestly erased itself, was Hradec Kralowc, right on time.

  The guards, with growing interest, watched the big mean mountain of a man and the feisty little lady cabdriver yell uncomplimentary things at one another. But then the feisty little lady cabdriver slapped the big mean mountain of a man across the chops, and the mountain responded with a straight right jab that drove the little lady back into the fence with a dang.

  "Say," one of the guards said. And the mountain was advancing on the little lady, shoulders bunched.

  Tiny had pulled his punch; Murch's Mom had not. "You shouldn't hit,"

  Tiny announced. He reared back.

  "Hey, stop that! Cut that out!" The two guards deserted their post, rushing to the defense of the little lady.

  Dortmunder and Hradec shook hands. Hradec said he was happy Dortmunder could make it; Dortmunder thanked him and said it was his pleasure. Hradec looked upward and declared the weather fine; Dortmunder agreed. Hradec confessed his liking for New York City, after all; Dortmunder allowed as how the old place still had a couple things going for it, if you didn't count its population and government.

  In the lower-right periphery of Dortmunder's vision, the self-portrait reappeared. "Why don't we go aboard?" Dortmunder said.

  "Fine idea," Hradec agreed, and led the way, saying, "We've prepared some literature for you. Not too much; we didn't want to overburden you."

  Tiny held gua
rd A and hit him with guard B.

  Kelp clambered up onto the slip, paused to brush off his lab coat--white shows nil the dirt--and scampered forward as Murch steered the little boat away upriver, planning to circle Roosevelt Island just for the hell of it.

  Hradec and Dortmunder crowded together into the little elevator and rode up.

  Kelp slipped through the open door into the ship, found the stairs where Dortmunder had said they would be, and walked up.

  "That's enough foolin around," Tiny decided. Dropping the guards, he turned to Murch's Mom and said, "Take me to Kennedy Airport."

  "The airport!" Murch's Mom cried in manic pleasure. "Why didn't you say so? Get aboard!"

  Tiny did so, with difficulty--even normal-size people have difficulty getting into the space allotted to the paying guest in New York City taxicabs--and Murch's Mom got behind the wheel, flicking off the off duty sign. While the dazed guards sat up and watched openmouthed, the cab backed around in a half circle and drove away.

  "I'm gonna have to throw the flag on you, Tiny," Murch's Mom said.

  "Otherwise, I'll get a citation for sure."

  "That's okay," Tiny said. "You can just deduct for the smack in the puss you give me."

  "Oh, did you feel that?" Murch's Mom asked, sounding surprised.

  "I heard it," Tiny told her. "That was bad enough."

  Once again, Hradec introduced Dortmunder to Lusk and Ter ment. He nodded to the woman and shook the man's hand, then had an afterthought and shook the woman's hand, then decided to go the whole hog and nodded at the man.

  Kelp, following Dortmunder's really excellent maps and directions, moved casually but swiftly down the hall away from the offices where Dortmunder and Hradec's staff were inventing a new folk dance, and opened the correct door for the makeshift lab where the left femur of the martyred St. Ferghana would be found. The real one.

  And where, unfortunately for Kelp's devices, the femur was currently undergoing investigation. John Mickelmuss looked up at the interruption, saw someone in a white lab coat, made the natural assumptions, and nodded. Kelp nodded back.

  "Mickelmuss," Mickelmuss said, extending his hand. "John Mickelmuss, Cambridge."

  "Kelly," Kelp said. "John Kelly, Park Slope."

  "Sorry, don't know that school," Mickelmuss said.

  Kelp hadn't known they were talking about schools. "It's just a little one," he explained. "Very specialized."

  "I know so few of the American schools," Mickelmuss said, politely putting the blame on himself. "Just taking a few X rays here," he added, gesturing at the bone and the equipment. "Turn it over to you in a jiff."

  "Take your time," Kelp assured him, smiling to show he meant it, and not meaning it in the slightest.

  "Won't be long," Mickelmuss said, smiled, and went back to his adjustments. Kelp began to lurk.

  Dortmunder, Hradec, Lusk, and Terment discussed visas, accommodations, sight-seeing, climate, exchange rates, and cuisine. The airport exit tax was touched on but not emphasized.

  Stan Murch sat at the wheel of his idling motorboat and idly watched the high cable cars swing back and forth between Manhattan and Roosevelt islands; red cars dangling from black cables way the hell up in the air there. Way up in the air. Look like something in Switzerland. Nice view of the city from out here. Bring Mom sometime, get her out of that cab for once.

  Since Tiny and Murch's Mom were done for today, she delivered him to his empty home on Riverside Drive, J.C. being still away on vacation. At that point, there was a brief dispute about the fare, but Murch's Mom never lost a dispute about the fare.

  John Mickelmuss adjusted the light, the table, and the angle of the camera. The other fellow, Kelly, was over at the service table, among the flasks and burners, moving them about this way and that. If Mickelmuss didn't know the idea absurd, he'd think this chap Kelly was playing tictacktoe with lab equipment, left hand against right. He lifted his head and smiled warmly at Kelly, saying, "Won't be a minute."

  "Hey, no problem," Kelly said; odd chap. "You know," he said, "this stuff over here almost smells like coffee."

  "It is coffee," Mickelmuss assured him. "Not very good, I'm afraid, but do have some. Won't be long now."

  Dortmunder asked more questions about tour guides, translators, bus transport from the capital, and cruises on the Varja River. The idea was, he should give Kelp all the time he needed to switch bones, because the idea behind that was, the Votskojeks shouldn't know the bone had been switched until well after the event. That's why Tiny and Murch's Mom had done the diversion when Kelp slipped aboard, and why Dortmunder himself would do a diversion on his way out, to let Kelp depart unnoticed with the real femur concealed on his person.

  But Kelp himself had to be concealed in the stairway, just off the big entrance foyer, when Dortmunder did finally come down, presumably with Hradec Kralowc and certainly by elevator. Then Hradec would wish Dortmunder godspeed and would elevate himself away again, Dortmunder would make the diversion out at the gate to distract the guards, and Kelp would scoot off the ship and down to the far end of the slip, where Murch would be waiting with the getaway motorboat. Precision.

  Perfection. Easy as falling off a house.

  "Won't be but half a tick now," Mickelmuss said, frowning and frowning and adjusting the tray that he'd now decided should hold the femur beneath the X-ray machine.

  Kelp sipped at the really foul coffee and considered the possibility of merely belting this foreigner over the head with one of these heavy objects available around here. That would be the end of the surprise aspect of the caper, of course, but, on the other hand, if this guy didn't finish setting up and take his goddam X-ray picture pretty soon, that would be the end of the entire heist. Kelp had to be in position, ready to scoot, when Dortmunder did his diversion.

  Murch stretched and yawned. Time to go back, get in position, be ready to go full throttle the instant Kelp's foot hit the deck, ready to scoot straight across to Long Island City where the getaway car was stashed.

  "Closing with it now," Mickelmuss said.

  "Of course, if I went in the winter" Dortmunder said, beginning to feel as desperate as Hradec and Lusk and Terment, "I suppose there'd be places to go skiing."

  The idea of John Dortmunder on skis was on the face of it too ludicrous to be entertained, but that's the task Hradec and Lusk and Terment had set themselves, and they stood up to it as best they could, Hradec gaining confidence in his answer as he climbed through it, saying,

  "Well, yes, of course, we have mountains, many many mountains, and the winter, you say the winter, certainly we have snow in the winter, a great deal of snow on the mountains, yes, of course, certainly, opportunities for skiing, absolutely, I don't see why not."

  "Of course," said Lusk. But the best Terment could do was nod.

  This time, Stan Murch was the self-portrait in the mural's corner. All clear on the slip, rumpled guards down at the far end by the gate, strutting back and forth, trying to act as though nothing at all had recently occurred.

  "Therel" Mickelmuss said. Then: "Oh, blast, I think I moved it. Best give it one more."

  Dortmunder clutched the manila folder of Votskojek information to his chest with his left hand while shaking hands generally with his right.

  "I appreciate this," he assured them all. "Appreciate the time, hope I didn't take you from, from, from…"

  "Not at all, not at all."

  "Our pleasure."

  "-Do enjoy Votskojek."

  "I'm sure I will," Dortmunder said. And I'm sure Kelp's out of there by now, he thought. He has to be.

  "I'll see you down," Hradec said with more obvious relief than diplomats usually show. Has to be out of there by now; has to be.

  But, no. "Hm hm hm hm hm," said Mickelmuss, bending over the equipment, while Kelp's hand reached out to a knobby fist sized machine on a nearby table. Enough, one way and another, was enough. Kelp lifted the machine.

  "Got it! At last," Mickelmuss announced, and tur
ned his smiling face to observe the machine in Kelp's hand. "Ah!" he said in delight.

  "Spectropolaric analysis! That ought to clear up a few matters."

  "Yeah, it ought to," Kelp said.

  "Well, she's all yours," Mickelmuss told him, with a careless wave at the bone, while with his other hand he patted his tummy and said,

  "Frankly, that coffee seems to go right through one. Perhaps I should have alerted you. Pardon." And he left.

  Dortmunder and Hradec zoomed down the ship's innards. Hradec wouldn't even leave the elevator. "You'll know your way," he said, smiling blankly, and waited for Dortmunder to exit. Which Dortmunder did, and the elevator door slid shut. Dortmunder crossed to the open door leading outside the ship, looking all around as he went, hoping to see Kelp lurking, but not.

  From beneath his lab coat, Kelp took the shoe box containing the fake femur, provided by Grijk Krugnk. "It's a real bone, from a real zevendeen-year-old girl," Krugnk had assured him. "Oat's all I know."

  "Dat's all I want to know," Kelp had assured him right back.

  The shoe box, with a rubber band around it to keep the top on and the bone in, had been suspended all this time from a hook stuck through one end of the box and then attached to a preexisting loop in the middle of the lab coat's back, at waist level. Wearing the loose garment with the shoe box in position had made Kelp look rather lard-assed for such an otherwise slender guy, but science is a pretty sedentary occupation, so it was okay.

  Kelp put the shoe box on the table near the real bone. He slid off the rubber band, opened it, and removed the copy. The two bones looked remarkably similar to the naked eye, except that the real one was slightly less shiny and had somewhat deeper shadows at its knuckly ends.

  Being very careful to keep it clear in his mind which bone was which, Kelp made the switch, closed the shoe box, put the rubber band on it, and had a hell of a time trying to hook it back onto that goddam loop. (Murch had done it for him in the motorboat.) Finally, he decided the hell with it, he'd just carry the goddam thing, so he tucked the shoe box under his arm and crossed to the hall door.